Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, seen through a cage window, gestures while speaking in a courtroom in Kirov on Friday. / Evgeny Feldman, AP

by Anna Arutunyan, Special for USA TODAY

by Anna Arutunyan, Special for USA TODAY

MOSCOW - Kremlin critic and protest leader Alexei Navalny was released from custody Friday a day after he was sentenced to five years in prison on embezzlement charges he says were concocted by the government to shut him up.

Prosecutors in a court in Kirov agreed to the release while Navalny appeals his conviction. The move means he can continue to run as a candidate for mayor of Moscow in an election in September.

Navalny thanked supporters and thousands of people who poured into the streets of Moscow on Thursday to denounce his conviction. The European Union and the United States also criticized the conviction.

"I'm not a pet kitten or a puppy who can be thrown out and then taken back in again," he said according to the RAPSI news agency. "Now we'll return to Moscow to our headquarters and we will continue our campaign."

He later tweeted: "Even if this is temporary, let's use this time to hassle the thieves. We can see them from the courtroom aquarium," he said, referring to the glass defendant's cage.

It remains to be seen if his conviction is overturned on appeal, an unlikely outcome in Russia. The sentence is the latest in a crackdown on dissent that followed President Vladimir Putin's re-election to a third presidential term in March 2012.

The Kremlin has arrested opposition activists and pushed for passage of laws that sharply increased fines for Russians who take part in protests not permitted by the government.

Protesters gathered steps away from the Kremlin on Thursday to express anger over the jailing. Police moved in to disperse protesters before midnight and detained those who refused to leave. More than 100 people were detained, Gazeta.ru reported.

"We were supposed to go to a museum, but the verdict changed that, and now we're here," said Anna Abdelkhabi, a mother of three who turned up at the protest with her children. "Of course, it was obvious that [Navalny would be found guilty], but on the other hand, there was this tiny, tiny bit of hope."

A court in Kirov found Navalny and a co-defendant guilty of embezzling $500,000 worth of timber from the state-owned KirovLes company. The embezzlement, which Navalny denied, was alleged to have taken place in 2009 while he was an adviser to the Kirov regional governor.

Navalny wrote about corruption at state-owned companies in which he owned shares, and his blog had hundreds of thousands of readers. With the help of volunteer lawyers, he used property records abroad to identify top officials and lawmakers who own undeclared foreign assets and hold foreign citizenship.

Navalny has called the dominant United Russia party "the party of crooks and thieves," and he targeted a wide circle of Putin loyalists, from members of parliament to state bankers. He chronicled promises Putin failed to deliver on and often mocked the Kremlin.

When charges of fraud in the 2011 parliamentary elections led to massive protests, Navalny emerged as a leader of the movement.

Others didn't buy the idea that Navalny was railroaded by Putin-controlled courts.

"He deserved it," said Tatyana Krainskaya, a Moscow resident. "Whatever he did, that's what he deserved. He stole the timber, that's clear."

"I thought that reason would prevail and the government would not apply this kind of truncheon," Ilya Ponomaryov, a parliamentarian with the oppositionist Just Russia party and a supporter of Navalny told the Dozhd independent television station.

Pro-Kremlin analysts and politicians denied that the case was politically motivated.

"The verdict against Navalny is a direct warning to our 'fifth column,'" Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist LDPR party, posted on his Twitter. "That's the path for all who are connected to the West and work against Russia."